JUDY BAILEY INTERVIEW:
Lexie Matheson finds joy after a rollercoaster journey
Lexie Matheson was born Alexander Matheson in Christchurch at the close of WWII. His mother, though, called him Sally. “She knew,” Lexie tells me, “even then, she knew. Mum had the ‘gift’, she could see things.” Alexander’s mother knew “he” was destined to be a “she”.
And so began an early life of secrecy and confusion, of loneliness and hurt
– a life now thankfully happy and fulfilled but, in Lexie’s words, “it’s been complicated.”
Lexie was born into a blended family, unusual in the 1940s. Her mother, Anne, had been orphaned as an infant and was brought up by nuns in an Anglican orphanage. She was widowed with two children by the time she met Lexie’s father, Jack. Jack had had, as Lexie puts it, a “chequered” youth. He was mad about rugby and cricket and alcohol. “I suspect he was an alcoholic,” she tells me. But he was “a charming ratbag”.
Jack voluntarily joined the army to fight in WWII and would return four and a half years later, injured by a machine gun blast and suffering badly from PTSD. “Mum would find him crouched by the window in the middle of the night, looking out for danger,” Lexie remembers. He endured years of hospital stays which included bursts of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy).
“Dad was a pacifist. He was angry, not with the family but with the system. He was always supportive of me. He had a wise political head.”
An activist in the union movement, he returned home one day with a bloodied nose. “‘Never back down to injustice,’ he would tell me. I’ve been very much influenced by him.”
She recalls a time in the 70s when she was going through a phase of dressing like David Bowie. “Dad took me aside and said, ‘If you’re a homo, I’ll still love you, you’re still my child.’ It would be another two decades, though, before Lexie felt safe to reveal her truth.
“I’ve known since I was eight that I was meant to be a woman. I saw an article in the Australasian Post magazine about Christine Jorgensen, who’d just come back from Sweden after gender reassignment surgery. I thought, ‘that’s me.’ I kept the magazine under my mattress.
“It was my secret. Because I knew I couldn’t talk about it, it ate away at me.”
School didn’t work for her, she says. “I was a ‘shut down’ child. My parents were pretty involved with each other and I had the sense of being separate from my family. I had no close friends.” Her half sister, 12 years older, took responsibility for her. “Dad loved me intently, but Mum couldn’t show that love, probably because of her upbringing in the orphanage.”
At school, Lexie did everything to prove “what a man I was. If others trained three nights a week for rugby I would do five.”
Eventually, Lexie joined the army against her father’s wishes. She served for eight years as Alexander Matheson.
The army career came to an abrupt end just before she was posted to Vietnam and it was then that she found her calling: teaching. It came naturally. “By then I had assumed the persona of a young beat poet, an aspiring actor.
I was suspended twice from teachers’ college, once for dyeing my hair green and the second time for wearing no suit and tie in the main building.
“I went back to teach at my old school, Linwood High in Christchurch. I was determined I didn’t want the kids to go through what I did [feeling disenfranchised and browbeaten].”
A lifelong love affair with teaching began. “I just love the classroom.”
She swiftly climbed the academic ladder and found herself in charge of a rural school in Taranaki. The kids were mostly Ma¯ori and between the ages of five and 14. “I was hopelessly lost,” she admits. “I’d had five years of teaching in a city of predominantly white middle class kids.” She felt out of her depth. But help came in the form of the “rural adviser”. “He told me, ‘I’m going to buy a dozen beer and I’ll stay with you for a week.’ He changed my life.”
It turned out she had a gift for teaching particularly difficult children, those no one else wanted, and was asked to set up a school for troubled kids in Taranaki.
“I worked alongside a psychologist. The kids were tough. I’d never turn my back on them when we were working with clay knives,” she says grimly.
While on the surface things were looking good for Lexie – still living as Alexander, a married man, someone to be looked up to in the community – underneath it was a different story.
Years of inner torment had led to a powerful drug habit. She’d begun taking that most insidious of drugs, heroin.
Eventually she was arrested with a boot full of drugs, not to mention, a rifle. “I knew what I was doing. I felt bulletproof. Fortunately, while I was in the local cells, the youth aid officer recognised me.” The two had worked together often. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
Lexie told him what had happened and he managed to get her transferred to Lake Alice psychiatric hospital. She was committed for three months, still as Alexander. The drugs charges were dropped, but she was awaiting sentence on the firearm charge. That was when her dad died. She breached bail conditions to attend his funeral. “I felt
I’d done the right thing.”
She was convicted on the firearm charge and returned to Lake Alice. According to Lexie, this was a place where ECT was used as a threat. “I had to be really careful. I was on high doses of amitriptyline, being treated for a bipolar disorder.”
Her treatment ended and she returned to Taranaki, thinking her teaching career would be over. As chance would have it though, she stumbled across an old friend, a school inspector, in the street.
“You must come back to
“I’ve known since I was eight that I was meant to be a woman.”
teaching,” he told her. “Write a letter saying why you want to go back and what you have to offer.” The authorities were impressed and allowed her back on probation.
At the end of that time, a different inspector spent two days in her classroom. “I’ve just had the two best days in the classroom I’ve ever had,” he told her. Lexie was back on track, practising truly child-centred learning.
It was teaching that led to her next career, in theatre.
“Every year the Ohura Choral and Dramatic Society produced a stage play. And every year the local teacher was in it,” she smiles. It turns out her acting skills matched her teaching skills.
She would eventually meet theatre producer, Raymond Hawthorne, a man she credits with turning her life around in more ways than one. His company, Theatre Corporate, based in Auckland, had a no-drugs policy. “Don’t come unless you’re fit. I will break you down and make you the actor you’ve always wanted to become,” Raymond told her. “He showed enormous faith in me,”
Lexie says. “Raymond gave me the opportunity to walk away from drugs.”
There followed a three-plus decade career in theatre. She became an award-winning director, writer, actor and literary advisor.
Double life
By 1980, Lexie had begun leading a double life. “I was confused from a gender point of view and a sexuality point of view. I would cross-dress, buy women’s clothes, wear them, then burn them. I’d promise myself I’d never wear them again… In the end though it’s not about the clothes, it’s to do with who you really are.”
Although she had yet to come out, Lexie had become increasingly involved in the gay rights movement, particularly in the fight for homosexual law reform. She also became a staunch advocate for Ma¯ori. “It’s about doing the right thing for minorities. I’m an ally. I love te reo, I feel at home and welcome and accepted on the marae.”
In the late 90s she had been living with her then partner for 20 years as Alexander. “I was intensely unhappy and secretive. I didn’t have contentment.” Something had to give. “Counselling helped me immensely. I found out who I was. It was a challenging journey.”
After revealing years of sexual abuse as a child, hours of therapy followed, but the counsellor felt there was still something holding Lexie back. “He brought out some chairs. He got me to sit in one as Alexander, and in the other as Sally, and we spoke to each other. ‘Which chair felt like you?’ he asked me. Sally’s was my answer. And there it was. I’d had constant suicidal thoughts previously, but once I’d made that connection they disappeared completely.
“I went home and told my partner, ‘I’m transitioning.’ That was the end of our 20-year relationship. ‘I’m not a lesbian,’ she told me. It was difficult for me but impossible for her,” Lexie explains, simply.“There is power in not having secrets. You don’t realise how debilitating it is having secrets; there’s so much guilt.”
At this stage, Lexie had three children, two from her first marriage and another with a long-term partner, and says they found out before she could tell them, which “wasn’t ideal”, but they’re now close and she has six “sublime” grandchildren.
Lexie met her now wife, Cushla, in 2000. “The sun came out in my life,” she smiles. Cushla is 30 years younger. They have a 17-year-old son, an accomplished sportsman who has competed internationally in karate and archery.
Karate has played an enormous part in Lexie’s life, the family of three are all
New Zealand representatives.
In 2013, Lexie, Cushla and their son Finn made submissions before a select committee on gay marriage. “Finn was 10 at the time. He wanted to come to support us.” A Christian fundamentalist was warning about the “appalling effect” gay marriage could have on children.
Finn sat there wondering if they just couldn’t see him. He spoke eloquently before the panel, and Lexie’s pride is still plain to see.
These days Lexie puts much of her energy into lobbying for human rights protection for gender diverse people.
She served four years on the Auckland Council’s Rainbow Advisory Panel and for many years led Auckland’s Pride Festival board. An eight-year stint as business manager of Auckland University’s Maidment Theatre led to a master’s degree with first class honours in Creative and Performing Arts.
These days she is a senior lecturer at Auckland University of Technology. What does she teach? “I teach kids to be happy,” she smiles. She created the first academic degree major in event management and now teaches leadership and event design. “Both papers,” she tells me, “have at the heart of them, ‘Who am I?’”
In 2016 she was awarded an ONZM for her services to the performing arts, education and LGBTQI rights.
The confused little boy who grew up as Alexander Matheson is now a kind, confident, capable, inspiring woman.
“There are still days I wake up and I think ‘I don’t know whether I can face today.’” It’s hard being transgender, she says. “You can’t park it. But transitioning has given me my authentic life. I’m 40 years clean and sober, and I’m experiencing the joy of authenticity.”